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Launching the Reedsy Live Chats

As our Reedsy authors and regular blog readers know, one of our main missions at Reedsy is to provide as much education as possible in the form of free content. Writing a book and publishing it are two very different — but equally formidable — challenges, and both have steep learning curves.

The great thing about Reedsy is that we have hundreds of extremely experienced professionals who specialize in all areas of the publishing process, from writing the book, to editing, designing, formatting and marketing it.

Of course, you can hire them through our marketplace, but to go one step further in our free content philosophy, we’ve decided to bring some of them even closer to you, in the form of… Facebook Live Chats!

What’s a Reedsy Live Chat?

Reedsy Live Chats are hosted on Facebook, using the Facebook Live platform. They are run directly (and independently) by one of the professionals from our marketplace, who will give relevant advice on a specific subject and answer live questions from the viewers.

If you want to see what the format looks like, just head to the Live Chat hub on the Reedsy blog and check out our first few sessions.

Reedsy Live Chats will be hosted every two weeks on Wednesday at 3pm EST (New York) — that’s 8pm BST (London), or noon PST (Los Angeles). They will usually run for 30-40 minutes, depending on the number of questions. They will touch on a variety of subjects, depending on the professional hosting them:

Cover Bootcamp: live feedback on your covers from one of our Reedsy designers! You'll need to send us your covers in advance, or share them as attachments in the comments.

Book marketing tipsand Q&A: a Reedsy marketer or publicist will cover a specific subject and then welcome all your marketing questions.

Of course, these are just the types of sessions we’ll run in the beginning — we’re totally open to suggestions! If you have questions or doubts about any part of the publishing process or want to hear from one of our professionals in particular, just let us know in the comments and we promise to schedule a session about it.

When’s the next chat?

You’ll find the schedule below for our first four Reedsy Live Chats. Of course, the best way to know about the next Live Chat is through our weekly newsletter! You can sign up to receive it for free through the green bubble on the right (the one that follows you as you scroll down the page). You can also like us on Facebook here.

We won’t be updating this table, so if you want to know about future sessions, sign up to our blog newsletter, or follow us on Facebook!

How can I get the most out of Reedsy Live Chats?

It’s pretty simple, really. On the given day and time, our Reedsy professional will hit “live” and start the Facebook Live video. If you like us on Facebook, it should appear in your feed — otherwise just head to our Facebook page and you’ll see it there.

The great thing about these Live Chats is that you can actually interact with our professionals through the “comments” section, and get your specific questions answered.

Obviously, you can just turn up and watch. But if you want to get more involved (and get the most out of these), here are a few session-specific things you can do.

For our advice sessions

In an “advice” session, our Reedsy professional will share some general tips on a specific subject for a few minutes, then open it up to questions. You can leave your questions or comments at any time in the live comments box, and our professional will go through them and try to answer as many as possible.

For our Cover Bootcamp sessions

In a “Cover Bootcamp” session, one of our designers will offer live feedback on cover designs. So if one of your books isn’t selling well and you’re wondering if it has the right cover, this is a good opportunity to find out! You can send your covers in advance to covers@reedsy.com, writing “Cover Bootcamp” in your subject line.

You can also just upload a picture of your cover in the comments section during the chat and our designer will try to get to it, depending on how many we received in advance already.

Important note: our Cover Bootcamp sessions will be restricted to certain genres — the ones our Reedsy professional specialises in. You will be informed of these via our newsletter.

A quick recap

Are you excited about Reedsy Live chats? We are too! To make sure you don’t miss the first one, and the ones after that, here’s a quick recap of the next steps you should take:

Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter. If you’re not, do so through the green box on the right.

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